


Eighteen Today, Dead Tomorrow

by aradian_nights



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Vietnam, Gen, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 13:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3572030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aradian_nights/pseuds/aradian_nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eighteen Today, Dead Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> [a fucking huge parade?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IA1Qucq20Y)
> 
> from a prompt on tumblr that asked for a historical au with armin and mikasa. they didn't specify so i went the 60s. bc damn, what a decade. to be precise it's between 68-69. like, after martin luther king jr. was assassinated but before the moon landing?
> 
> i had a lot of different idea for this story, some got in, some didn't make it. specifically i was going to address race more. the idea that some characters aren't white, specifically eren and connie and this case. connie was meant to have a larger role due to this but i didn't get to introduce a lot of characters outside the main three.
> 
> also, there will almost definitely be historical inaccuracies. i haven't learned about the vietnam war since grade school. i had to look it up in my text book.

Small, red slick fingers drummed idly against a barrel as bony knees sunk into the earth and wriggly toes were stained by dirt and grass. The sun was baking the back of his neck, and his hair was soaking up all his sour sweat. His back ached, his spine bent at an awkward angle for an indeterminable length of time, locking up the muscles in his neck and his shoulders and even his upper thighs. His eyes watered from the sweat and the discomfort and the acidic fumes that flew all around him.

He was up to his elbows in red, up to his ears with sickness.

Armin Arlert was so fucking sick of war.

His mouth was dry and his lips were cracked and rigid, flaking skin as sharp and deadly as razors, and when he breathed it was all shaky and his mind was all in a haze from the intermingling scents of dying grass and moistened skin and heavy, acrid red dripping all over, bleeding into the parched earth and leaving dark stains on his torn up pants.

"Hey now…" Armin had found Eren's conscription papers nearly six months ago. It had been pretty damn annoying, actually. He'd been real antsy about it, stuffing his things all up in his messenger bag whenever Armin walked into the room and making a habit of not running his mouth. Like Armin didn't know immediately or something. "Why didn't you say something about getting drafted, Eren?"

He'd immediately gone all on defensive, his muscles locking up and his eyes flashing dangerously, the way they did when he was irritated and simultaneously very much in doubt. Eren's nostrils had flared.

"Well," he said, hopping up onto the sill of their dorm window. He'd held an unopened bottle of coke in both his hands. Snow had swirled at his back, gathering in fluffy bunches around the lock and sinking into the fly screen. "For one, all I've been hearin' from you for the past, what, how many months now, has been all this peace and love shit, and frankly I didn't want to be the one to break your precious hippie heart."

"Thanks a whole lot," Armin told him flatly. "We'll pray for you at our next moonlit orgy."

That had gotten a half a smile out of him, and he uncapped the coke with the ledge of the windowsill. "You sure as hell better!" He looked at Armin, his eyes bright and fierce and full of some vicious, unbendable resolution. "Okay, well, second of all, I was a little scared. Like, you and Mikasa are so fuckin' stubborn, and I ain't ready for y'all to come follow me into hell."

"What?" Armin had been surprised. He hadn't even thought of enlisting to be with Eren. It hadn't even been an option. "Do you  _want_  me to enlist?"

"What the fuck did I just say, dumbass?"

It hadn't really settled in his head or his heart that Eren was going off to fight the war that Armin had been vehemently and vocally against since its inhibition. What Armin was worried about was the fact that even though Eren made jokes at the expense of Armin's "hippie shit", Eren was very much an outspoken peacemaker. The only difference was that Eren had difficulty with channeling the blame. Was it the government's greed or the people's incompetence? Was it his own inadequacy as a defecting citizen, or was it the higher powers who were at fault for turning schoolboys into soldiers?

Armin thought the answer was simple, but it was different for Eren. Eren had faith. In a lot of things— people, patria, whatever. But there was no simple answer for a boy who wasn't sure whether it was his duty or his death to answer the call to arms. Maybe it was both. But Armin would never say that.

"Is this what you really want, Eren?" he asked quietly, sitting down on his bed and listening to the springs squeak under his weight.

Eren had taken a swig of his coke, and he'd smiled briefly. "You say that like I have a choice," he said bitterly.

The walls of Armin's dorm room had become overwhelmingly bare. Like years of friendship had been diminished with nothing but a scrap of paper, a salute, and the bite of a razorblade.

For a while after Eren had left, Armin had refused to leave his room. He stared at the mattress, stripped clean of Eren's homemade quilt and the piles of notebooks that consistently covered its surface because Eren didn't use his desk, and he stared at the barren walls, at the egg white cinderblocks that had once been covered with polaroids and posters and art that he'd done on a whim. He thought that this war was making a habit of scrubbing the individuality out of its country.

Mikasa had showed up every day to check on him. Her hair was fluffy and dark around her pretty face, and he noted how her outfits changed, micro minis and flared skirts and jeans and bellbottoms— she tried everything and ended up never liking any of it. It was fascinating to watch. Mikasa didn't care much about fashion. She just bought and wore whatever. Which explained why she'd come in one day wearing an angel dress and return the next in nothing but an oversized tee shirt and ripped denims that were way too long.

"You haven't been going to class," she brought up one day as Armin thumbed through one of his textbooks. It was physics today. The radio was on. Bob Dylan was playing the guitar as Armin was mapping out the stars in his head and trying to apply relativity to what he knew about the stars and their positioning according to earth.

Mikasa strode up to his radio and turned it off. It clicked and shuddered, but Armin did not look up from his book. A letter from Eren sat unopened on his desk.

Of course she'd spotted it.

"He sent you one too?" She picked it up and turned it over. "What? You didn't even open it?"

"I'll open it when Eren comes back," he answered simply.

"Armin…" She sounded so distant and sad. He glanced up at her, guilt turning inside his stomach. He snapped his book shut and tossed it aside.

"Hey." Armin pulled his knees up to his chest, and he tilted his head at her. His hair was long, and it curled around his cheeks as he smiled. "I'm not worried. I think if anyone can come back from a pointless war, it's Eren."

She didn't speak. She watched him, her eyelids sliding over her eyes languidly, and she set the envelope back down gingerly. He could feel her incredulity, and it hurt to know she had as little faith in Eren as Armin did in himself.

Maybe he should have enlisted.

But that wouldn't go over well. Eren would be disappointed in Armin for abandoning all his anti-war sentiments just because Eren had been drafted. And Armin would hate himself even more. How could he fight a war he didn't believe in?

He believed in Eren, and right now that was enough. That had to be enough.

"He told me," she said quietly, "that I should watch out for you."

Armin frowned. "What's that supposed to mean, huh?" He hunched defensively. "I'm fine."

She shot him a chilly look, and he sighed, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. His mattress springs squeaked under pressure. Wind beat at his fly screen. The room was so quiet without Eren.

And Mikasa looked so sad. What could Armin do? How could he possibly make her happy when it was clear neither of them could think clearly without Eren there to keep their minds aloft. They'd both lost their anchor. The wind and water were rising.

What could they do?

What could they feel?

She sat down beside him. The mattress screeched in pain.

Silence stretched out between them, and Armin felt a knot clench up in his stomach as it knocked upon his eardrums, four fucking blows to each ear and nothing left inside his head but a dull ringing as he realized they had all at once lost touch with what the other was thinking.

What could they do? How could they not stray?

"Do you remember," Armin asked suddenly, "when we went to see Dr. King?"

That got a smile out of her.

"Yes," she said quietly. "That was Eren's idea. Eren's money for the bus, too."

"And we met Connie," Armin continued, "and Sasha, and Ymir, and they introduced us to Bertholdt and Reiner and Historia, who introduced us to Annie and Jean." He leaned his head back, and his skull knocked softly against the grayish cinderblock wall. "What the hell would we have done without Eren?"

"I don't know."

"He was the reason I started doing marches," he whispered, staring up at the ceiling. "The reason I look at the stars and I think that we could go farther than crossing oceans, that we could see galaxies and move beyond this nonsense, like our world isn't one world, but a hundred worlds split up by some rich old man's jittery fountain pen. Eren's the reason why I went to this school." He turned his eyes to her face, the smooth lines of her angular eyes and soft mouth making his brain rattle from sensory overload. "He's the reason why I met you."

"I know that," she said. She lifted her chin high. "I know all of that. You don't think I know that? Armin, I'd be in a gutter right now if not for Eren. You think I don't know that I have him to thank for every little thing I have?"

"I didn't mean it like that…" He felt like he'd slipped up. He watched her. The wind was picking up outside, and the ringing in his head amplified. Water was rushing. Waves in a storm that had started without their consent.

"I know what you meant." She turned her head up toward the ceiling. "It's just… you think you're the only one who owes the whole wide world to Eren. You're not."

"What are we going to do?" Armin whispered, tears filling his eyes. He'd been so determined not to cry. But it was too late for all of that. He'd lost something to the drums of war, and now he was stuck in a cinderblock cage with a raspy radio and memories of dead peacemakers to fill his waking hours.

"I think that's up to us now," she said in a voice that made it abundantly clear that neither of them had any choice in where they drifted.

Armin stared at the barren wall across from his bed, and he took a deep breath.

"Will you help me, then?"

"With what?"

He pushed off the bed, the ringing in his ears drowning out the mattress's deathly cry.

"I'm gonna fight back."

The silence came again, this time with harsher blows, and the ringing stopped. It was replaced by a dull roar.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "So am I."

He'd known what she'd meant before she'd even said it.

So he tuned into radio stations, read the papers, and organized a date. He mostly spread the news from word of mouth, but Annie offered to hand out fliers for him, and after that it was sort of a blur. A little protest became a fucking huge parade.

Armin Arlert was so sick of this fucking war.

He was up to his elbows in red.

A long shadow drew over his banner. It was some bare relief to shift his body and look up from the barrel of red paint. He was hoping it would be Jean or Ymir or someone with pot on them at any given time, but as his eyes adjusted to the shifting sunlight, it was Mikasa's face staring down at his.

"Hey," he gasped excitedly, sitting up straight and waving his paintbrush at her. It was all red, just like him. He'd fucked up a few times. "You wanna grab a brush and give me a hand?"

It was like a tidal wave.

He knew exactly what was coming.

It was hard not to when she was standing before him in fucking fatigues.

"Oh," he said softly. Dejection stung like a bitch. Fear hurt even worse. Like a fire swallowing up his entire chest.

 _I'm alone_ , he thought, stunned. He sat with paint smeared across his arms and grass stains bleeding into his knees, and he let himself sink into a slump.

"Armin—" she started, closing her eyes.

He pushed himself to his feet. "Don't," he said, holding up his bright red hands. Grass clung to the wet creases in his palms. "You don't have to explain anything to me."

"I don't want you to hate me," she said, her voice distant and her eyes glued shut. "I know how much this means to you. I wish… I could have helped you more…"

"Mikasa," he said softly. He reached over the banner and grasped her arms. She opened her eyes and blinked at him tiredly. "Why the hell do you think I'm doing all of this?"

"Because…" She glanced down at the banner.  _1, 2, 3, 4_ , it proclaimed.  _We don't want your fucking war_. "I guess… you just hate it so much?"

"Nah…" Armin quickly removed his hands from her arms when he recalled they were wet with paint. Two red handprints were left upon her jacket. "I'm just sick of watch the people I love being stripped of their right to choose whether to live and whether to die." He felt silly. Maybe this was a silly thing to do.

She looked at him, and she straightened herself up, raising her chin high. "I'm not going to die, Armin," she declared.

"Good," he said, bowing his head. "Then you won't mind if I don't say goodbye."

He didn't see her smile. Only her curt nod and her shoulder as she yanked him into a tight hug.

They were drifting away at sea in two separate directions.

What could they do?

"Hey," he whispered, taking in the faint flowery scent of her downy hair, trying not to think about how it could very possibly be the last time he ever would smell it. "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."

She pulled back. She said nothing, but she nodded very curtly.

And with that, she was gone.

Just like that.

Ah.

What could he do?

Historia found him lying in the grass, a barrel of paint kicked half over their banner and half over himself. She plucked up a few daisies and dropped them on his chest.

"Mikasa left, huh?" Her hair was pale as sunshine fluttering against the shimmering sky, and he groaned. He could hear chanting in the distance.  _1, 2, 3, 4_. "Come on, man. I think you're done here."

"I think I'm done," he murmured. "Period."

"Oh?" She glanced at him curiously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He sat up, his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his chest where the paint hadn't dried yet. He tore his wallet from his back pocket.

"Can I see your lighter?" he asked her.

She watched him warily. But she produced a lighter from the pocket of her jeans, and he took a deep breath.

He pulled his draft card from his wallet, which was tossed aside in favor of the flame that tickled the crisp yellow corner of Armin's one way ticket to hell on earth.

Historia looked a little alarmed.

"You could go to jail for that," she said.

He flicked the burning card aside, and he shrugged.

"I'm pretty sure I'm a prisoner either way," he said, glancing down at the daisies that had landed in the pool of red paint below. "At least this way I can choose where I get to rot."


End file.
